“Take My Hand,” by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, while a work of fiction, is loosely based on the real-life case of Relf v. Weinberger.

In June 1973, Minnie Lee and Mary Alice Relf, two young Black sisters, ages 12 and 14, were sterilized without their consent in Montgomery, Alabama, by a federally funded program. Their social worker, Jessie Bly, brought it to the attention of a local attorney and the case was eventually tried in federal court in Washington, D.C. The case is considered pivotal in that it brought to light the injustices suffered by thousands of poor, Black women in the South who had been sterilized without their consent under federally funded family planning programs.

The novel follows young nurse Civil Townsend, fresh from nursing school and in her first job in a family planning clinic in Montgomery, Alabama. In her caseload, she is assigned two sisters, Erica and India, just 9 and 11. India is mute.

It is Civil’s job to give the girls shots of Depo-Provera to prevent them from getting pregnant, though neither girl is sexually active. Civil suspects the shots, which she later learns have not been approved by the FDA, may cause side effects and should not be given to young girls anyway. So, she switched them to birth control pills.

The girls live with their widowed father and grandmother in abject poverty on the rural outskirts of Montgomery. Civil wants them to have a better life, so she helps them get an apartment in a newly constructed set of low-income housing units. One day, on a routine visit to see the girls, she finds they are not at home or at school. Their grandmother tells them they have been taken to a hospital. Civil asks the grandmother who took them and if she signed anything. The grandmother says yes, she made her mark on some papers.

Civil rushes to the hospital, but the girls have already undergone a tubal ligation.

Civil becomes outraged at the injustice and with the help of some friends, both attorneys, files a lawsuit against the clinic. With the help of a young attorney, the suit gains national attention and the family is asked to go to Washington, D.C. to testify before a congressional subcommittee, chaired by Sen. Ted Kennedy.

It’s later learned that forced sterilizations of poor women of color are not only happening in Alabama but across the country in family planning clinics all operated by federally funded programs. Upon making this discovery, the lawyer representing Erica and India decides to sue the federal government to put a stop to the exploitation of these women, many of whom are often coerced into sterilization procedures in order to keep their public assistance benefits.

It is hard to believe that something like this happened just 50 years ago and continues today. According to the author’s note, prisoners in federal facilities are routinely sterilized, and sterilization is often part of a plea deal in court cases in Tennessee. Patients in state hospitals were, and still are, sterilized without their consent.

The book has well-developed characters and flows from one page to the next. It moves deftly from the Montgomery of 1973 to Civil’s present life in 2016 Montgomery after she has become a doctor. It is hard to put down. The characters encourage our sympathy and empathy.

The author points out that being poor, a woman of color, or with a physical or mental challenge should not dictate whether a woman is fit to be a mother. In all of these instances, the characters of the book lose the choice to be a mother because of these same conditions.

In the end, it is a book about redemption, forgiveness, courage and a belief in the power of good to overcome the bad. It is a book worth reading.